Letter to the Editor

To the editor:

In Tuesday’s Iowa State Daily, John McCarroll, director of university (public) relations, scolds Daily editor Sara Ziegler for overlooking the facts. In the same issue, he brushes off a nine-page statement by our group which is asking for a review of President Jischke as consisting of “opinions … and newspaper articles where their opinions are quoted …”

This disappoints me. I remember John as an old newspaper man who used to visit my journalism classes and make impressive presentations to students. Could his current job have changed his views as to what is opinion and what is fact? It seems that our report contained several facts, including these:

(1) At his installment in 1991, President Jischke did promise that teaching, not research or outreach, would be the number one priority at Iowa State University.

(2) Five years later, he did tell students and faculty (but not the Board of Regents) that the university had made great strides in “research, outreach and technology” but not in undergraduate education.

(3) During his early years, the bulk of the new money received by Iowa State was spent on agricultural research and the Institute for Physical and Technical Research, while the other state universities were spending much of their new funding on academic programs and teaching.

(4) In the past five years, only 8 percent to 14 percent of those ISU professors who were tenured or promoted were advanced on the basis of their teaching. Last year (1998-1999), only one faculty member was promoted and tenured on the basis of teaching alone; about 50 were advanced for “research-scholarship.”

(5) New Provost Rollin Richmond did tell the Faculty Senate and university department heads that, no matter how well a teacher performs in the classroom, he/she will not be given tenure or promoted without having conducted impressive research.

(6) At this Wednesday’s meeting, GSB will discuss a resolution that is critical of the university’s tenure policy and that asks the regents to address our petition with “sincerity.”

(7) Since 1990, Iowa State has lost 167 full-time equivalent faculty (1,855 to 1,688 — nine percent) and gained 711 professional and scientific workers (1,427 to 2,128 — 36 percent)

(8) For the first time in history, in 1991, research expenditures (including Ames Lab) did exceed instructional expenditures, and this trend has continued.

(9) The North Central Accreditation team, in its most recent report, did criticize the Jischke administration for not involving the faculty in budgeting and planning and cited a “centralized decision making process” as the reason.

A member of that team did tell a Faculty Senate official that Iowa State’s faculty is the “most disempowered he had ever seen.

(10) A committee named by President Jischke to study the relationship between the university and the Iowa State Daily did conclude that “the University community is afraid or apathetic about speaking out” and that “there is a widespread lack of understanding on campus about the importance of a free and unfettered press.”

That committee included the heads of the journalism programs at Iowa State and the University of Nebraska.

(11) During the Jischke administration, Iowa State has had many (I think “inordinate” is a valid adjective, but that is an opinion) personnel problems that have resulted in law suits and/or public confrontations. The 25 cases cited in our statement have been documented.

They did involve charges of sexual harassment, race/age/sexual-orientation discrimination, arbitrary dismissal, spousal favoritism, tampering with research findings, administrative denial of tenure to top-caliber teachers, violation of First Amendment rights, plagiarism, forgery of credentials and pay disputes.

(12) The university did decline to intercede on the behalf of Max Porter, engineering professor, when he charged that a corporate research sponsor had altered his research findings and published them under a university cover.

(13) Two former university employees are suing Iowa State and claiming university reprisals against them — one for criticizing the president, the other for whistle blowing on a fellow employee who was downloading pornography from an Ames Lab computer.

Those sound like facts to me.

Also, if I were a regent, I just might resent John’s anticipating my reaction to the report before I had an opportunity to respond publicly to it.

Again, those of us who wrote the petition and the accompanying statement are simply asking that the regents arrange for an objective, comprehensive inquiry into the validity of our concerns.

That seems to be a reasonable request in light of the evidence we have provided.

Bill Kunerth

Emeritus professor

Journalism